The Feet of Sidaiva
by zimriel
Summary: Sidaiva, court-dancer of Ummaus, famed throughout Zothique for the grace of her dancing and the beauty of her feet, incurs the jealousy of Princess Lunalia, daughter of King Phantour of Xylac. Expanded from the abstract by Clark Ashton Smith.


_This fragment precedes: the fall of Miraab and Tasuun in "Ulua"; first fall of Ummaos and Xylac in "Eidolon" and that city's resurrection "Hieroglyph" and maybe "Crabs"; fall of Yoros in "Torturers". Prequel to "Weaver"; fragment "Mandor" having been overturned by "Ulua". __Post__dates "Ilalotha". Contemporary perhaps with "Maat", "Empire", "Charnel God", "Tomb Spawn"._

From the raucous dockside taverns of Mirouane even to the tomb-sombre inns of Zul-Bha-Shair, the traveler may still hear tales told of Sidaiva's Last Dance, for princess Lunalia's debut under the domes within Ummaos. Fewer are those who whisper of Lunalia's own dance, at her wedding to prince Famorgh under the spires of Miraab; and of how they lived ever after.

For six days leading to the fifteenth anniversary of the princess Lunalia's birth, as the stars set on a moonless night, the tramps of horses and of footmens' boots raised a deep screen of dust in the dim dawn sunlight, swirling through the open portes of the city like the whirling red skirts of a perfervid desert dancer. All across the busy streets of Ummaos, imperial city of Xylac, rumours flew like the airborne dust from the mens' souk to the womens' and back again. The banquet at the palace. The dance of Sidaiva. And to top it all, the ball!

Lunalia was the only living scion of the emperor Phantour and was, all agreed, already possessed of a rare pulchritude and grace, though it was not often that her face appeared from the palace balconies and never in the streets of Ummaos. All the emirates and sultanates, kings and shahs, had sent their most eligible princes to evaluate the heir presumptive to this greatest empire upon the great continent Zothique; and the princesses came too, to evaluate the princes.

From lush and verdant Tasuun, King Tnepreez thirty-sixth of that name and fifty-eighth sovereign had sent from his capital Miraab his elderly queen and their eldest child the prince Famorgh. These waved to a cheering crowd from an open horse-drawn carriage. This prince remained small and thin and pale even in this his thirtieth year. But – the people observed – the coaches in his train bore such stock of sweet preserves and potent liqueurs of apricot and pomegranate as should suffice to make a troop of men stouter and ruddier, if nothing else.

Among the island nations, almost hidden behind the rattling spice-carts from Sotar, one guest entered the gate on foot. She was accompanied only by a slight and silent donkey from the port Oroth to bear her scant luggage. Her dark flaxen cloak fit her as a cerement, topped with a peaked hood, over a black-meshed veil that revealed little of her face. Its funereal fabric was dyed by the same muricid as the corpse-mottle sail of that small boat which had bourne her, from across the stygian current in the far western sea.

That this guest's vestment had arrogated to itself a hue best reserved for lawful empire should alone have barred her from all Xylac's domains. In earlier days men from the island Uccastrog had visited her cities under similar colours, and these men had made no good account of themselves. The empire requested no guest of Uccastrog this year, and that island had sent none.

Those few burghers on Ummaos who noticed the shrouded woman observed, further, with revulsion, that her cloak's brooch, carved from an abysmal-black pearl, was in the outline of a spiked mace. Here was the weapon by which the demon Thasaidon – so the nurses tell recalcitrant children – had subdued all those seven hells which churn too close neath the preternaturally-raised continent of Zothique. This one's open worship was in those days anathema not only in Xylac but throughout the mainland. Many were the tales told of how his servitors had doomed themselves and all those near them. In all the souks, the murmur spread that the surety for the mace's blasphemous bearer was the toll the empire had paid, whereof the silent-crewed caravels of Maat had spared the other guests' transports not least the wine-bearing quinquiremes from Yoros.

But as this haughty veiled woman and her humbly laden beast passed by the now-quieter crowd, the pair were swiftly hidden from view by the gaily laughing men from Yoros in their jingling finery. These having disembarked also at the harbours at Oroth, now they rode alongside a train of carts creaking under the weight of clattering clay amphorae. Herein sloshed a purple much better fit for emperor and publican alike.

And so this raucous cavalcade approached the centre of the great city Ummaos, and passed among the marbled mansions wherein the business of empire was conducted. And over the rest of the day the guests and the imperial porters set upon that great white pavement which led westward to the palatial porte, all colonnaded also in a milky marble in accordance with an ancient style termed "classical" though no men remembered why.

Within the palace walls, south and west and north of the emperor's white domed manse, geometric knot-gardens spread for acres around the marble fountains. High did the red Sotari lilies wave over the well-watered green lawns, and over their blue irises and purple orchids. North of the palatial gardens was reserved for the imperial dancers.

Here were wide courtyards and dozens of changing-rooms. Hither, on pain of death, only the eunuch dance-instructors and the royal messengers might enter. Even the Xylacquite kings, now emperors, never called upon the place for their harems, which harems in any case Phantour had dissolved many decades ago.

Within the banqueting hall paneled in ebony and inlaid in gold, upon the dais carved of regal sard and jasper, there sat at his banqueting-table Phantour, emperor of Xylac, beside one seat as yet unoccupied.

As the red western twilight ebbed over the palm-shaded garden there, the assembly in the hall hushed as was heralded, and presented, the princess Lunalia.

Thence, from the shadowed eastern portico, the princess walked toward her father's dais in a sheer purple shift midway to her thighs. It looked to all assembled as if her oval gibbous face was the completion of the newly-crescent moon over that darkling sunset opposite, and equally bright and flawless. Her dark kohl-inlaid eyes gazed out with all the serenity of a hieroglyph; her limbs glimmered like the down of a newly-adult swan as she stepped up the dais to her father's side.

With that, the emperor Phantour stood, and whoever else might have been seated stood with him. On this eve, the emperor called the chief priest of moon goddess Ililot to utter the blessing. Upon the conclusion of this necessary task, all the assembly raised their glasses of Xylac's gold-tinted wine for a toast to the now ripened princess, whose face beamed at the attention so freely granted. This fine vintage being quaffed, all sat to feast upon the meats cooked in the spices of Sotar, now washed down with those older and darker wines from Yoros, as the court fools and musicians entertained the guests.

The slaves cleared the last of the desserts and swept the floor with their besoms as the sons and daughters of Xylacquian lesser nobility, themselves, served their guests with the sweet spirits of Tasuuni apricot and pomegranate. And now a lone horn-player struck up a new tune, a foreign one, with the hypnotic cadences of a snake-charmer. And from the side, as the moon set behind the dark horizon and the evening star yet blazed above it, there appeared as if by sorcery the empire's most famed dancer on her bared and strange little feet. Here appeared Sidaiva.

Sidaiva's ancestors hailed from a hill country far to the south, where they served that star of the evening with music and dance and, for all we know, still do. A small clan had been gifted to Phantour's own forebears, when the Xylac kings had first swapped their royal ermine for imperial purple. After so many generations kept beside the palace, few left of this people might live to adulthood; of those few, fewer still were other than idiots or freaks.

Sidaiva was the full fruit of generations of breeding and culling. Her purpose in the court, her only reason to exist, was to do as she now did: to dance for the glory of Xylac.

At twenty-three years in the confines of the dancers' manse, Sidaiva's diaphanous garment revealed a figure both slender and athletic. In the light of the sconces her hair was a dark ruby red and her oiled hairless skin glowed as clouded topaz; her upswept eyes flashed like twain tourmalines. Whether by sorcery or by her race or by the generations of inbreeding, it was the feet which caught the eyes of all the notables in the hall; four long toes, each extending from an instep preternaturally short, more as the hooves of a faun or the talons of a raptor than as any human feet.

As she took her first step onto the floor, the drums started a soft little patter. Her tetradactyls tripped to the centre of the clean ebon floor in perfect harmony to the exotic beat. As she swayed and turned, like the apish feet of our race can never imitate, the beat sped up. The male guests' hearts seemed to hammer in tune with the beat and with the light slap of Sidaiva's alabaster soles upon the black wooden floor. The ladies alternated their gaze with awe at the dancer's impossible moves and with frustration at the men's inability to cast their own gaze away from her.

The music reached its crescendo and, at last, the drums stopped, and so stopped Sidaiva, her thin skirts swaying with the last piping of the horn.

That last musical note seemed to echo in the silence of the banquet hall. In that silence Sidaiva turned to the throne where sat the emperor, who looked past her as if entranced; and the princess Lunalia, more attentive and impassive. The dancer before them descended low into a curtsey, with all the grace by which she had danced before. As the dancer bottomed out her gaze flickered upward – and met Lunalia's. Sidaiva paused just a moment before arising, carefully. Once she had fully stood upright, the aged emperor shook himself from his trance, and began a slow clap. All the attendance followed their liege's applause, growing louder, and erupting into cheers; many leaping to their feet. Sidaiva blushed at the attention.

Only one did not join the clamours – the princess Lunalia.

Lunalia, they say, had been accustomed to life as an imperial princess and, at the last, as the heir. She had seen older siblings pass away; one, a boy, had accidentally ingested an emulsion of quick-silver and gone quite mad before taking his own life. Her mother, too, had not survived the loss of her last child, a girl miscarried in her fifth month. The emperor Phantour had not remarried; he had taken no lovers and kept no concubines. But now on the emperor's face, gazing at this servant girl – at this kept pet from the menagerie! – was a yearning Lunalia had not seen on him since the queen's last months.

This was Lunalia's banquet; the dances which followed in the night were supposed to be Lunalia's dances.

And so the guests when they looked at the dais saw, with some terror, that the young princess's selenic face was blotching, like the full moon's over a desert necropolis disturbed by ghouls. The applause faltered; the emperor looked sideways and then hurriedly turned back to Sidaiva, congratulated her and dismissed her. Sidaiva, still blushing, but now visibly fearful, swayed out of the room in her translucent gown, all seeming to evaporate like the mists fleeing the red dawn.

Little is said of the ball that followed, and less of that good. Lunalia's first dance was with her father's, as was the custom; the princess's face was still darkened, the emperor's guilt-stricken. The applause after the two had finished their dance and they reseated themselves was subdued, as far as applause can be subdued in the presence of an emperor.

The wan prince Famorgh, after fortifying himself with a goodly sip of his own land's pomegranate-brandy, for his part dared approach the princess Lunalia for a second dance. As reward for his pains, she cruelly waved him off. The other young men, observing this, either turned to select other companions or else offered brief greeting to their princess and _then _turned to others. Her father Phantour by contrast graciously danced with several ladies present, favouring the princes' mothers and grandmothers – if in a manner best regarded as polite.

Lunalia would speak only with the embassatrice shrouded in the purpura of her own dress, and none heard of what matters these two spoke. No man asked to guide the veiled one across the ebon-tiled floor. The more minor guests, starting with the grim youths from Tinarath and from Zul-Bha-Shair which realms suffer no traffic with such as those as come from Maat, made their excuses and slipped away early. Nor did any man so guide the princess on that night. At the appointed time, or as some tell slightly before it, the princess delivered an audible yawn; her father bade the musicians play the last song, and the blemished celebration mercifully ended. Lunalia did not even stay for that song's end.

Word of the failed ball spread through the bazaars on the following morn. Murmured in the souk of the women was that Sidaiva had committed a witchcraft, that she had designs on the throne herself. In the souk of the men, meanwhile, mutters abounded that the emperor had spoiled his daughter and that it was never too late to administer the appropriate remedy upon the principessal rump, lest she inherit a pride of cats for consort and anarchy for empire.

It is further related to us, from a man absent his right hand, that a fortnight later, when the moon was full and high above, the burglar Qiv made a climb for the western wall of the palace. The errand he was undertaking, we are not told; but as Qiv was clutching the edge of the parapet, eldritch lights caught his eyes from a high story of those mansions to his left. The sound of young voices floated across the moonlit courtyards, three female voices: two strident and chanting; the third one plaintive, and waxing hysterical. Below him, he could see servants and courtiers, looking toward the lights and scurrying for shelter like beetles in a garret when the lamp is lit. The very lineaments of the walls seemed to bend and flex, outside any geometry that make sense to men; Qiv's arms felt that they were less supporting his weight, than keeping himself from flying up – or, down? – into that dead and desert moon now directly over his head. After the feeling passed he heeded the beetles' wisdom and swiftly descended back down the wall. Thus the account of the one-handed man, if honest men will credit such accounts.

The honest men of Ummaos report that they never saw Sidaiva to dance again. The dancers' quarter, future visitors to the palace noted, had been razed, its old flagstones repurposed for the drilling of soldiery and certain of its structures made into hospitals and guest-quarters. The emperor Phantour no longer so doted on his daughter; he no longer seemed to dote on anything, besides the health of his empire.

But Lunalia was still princess of Ummaos, heir to Xylac, and now of marriageable age. When the king Tnepreez XXXVI of lush and verdant Tasuun called a ball to his cypress-lined and marble-towered city Miraab, Lunalia came in her carriage, and alighted therefrom upon onyx shoes remarkably smaller than one should expect from her youthful yet womanly frame. When the banqueting was done and the musicians reached for their instruments, Lunalia dared approach the diminutive prince Famorgh – rather towering over him – and, having made gracious apology, took his hand for that first dance.

By whatever artifice, and some Miraabis now blame their late queen, the music chosen was an interpretation of that selfsame horn and drum composition by which Sidaiva had danced in Ummaos. If the intent was to throw their visiting princess off her stride, this intent was cheated. Lunalia smiled wide and deep as she and her shorter and older partner spun across the white-paneled floor. All agreed the pair danced as if they were a couple trained in the ballet rather than as two pampered princes.

For some weeks afterward Lunalia remained a fixture in Miraab's court, never distant from prince Famorgh's shoulder, upon which she often leaned as if for support, especially after the sudden deaths of Tasuun's king and his queen. It came as no surprise when Lunalia and Famorgh were betrothed; nor that it should be held at the pavilion in the garden south of the palace, a favoured tryst for regal lovers in Miraab. What was more of a surprise was that the wedding should be held under that serrated mace of dark Thasaidon, whose servitors had not prospered in Tasuun as they had in Maat.

The wedding itself, held outside, proved overcast. The bride was seen to be limping, near to stumbling on her way to the god's altar of jet, to the intense consternation of her groom; and at the banquet the newlyweds did not dance. The next morning, king Famorgh was seen to be pale in nausea and terror, and he was found deep in his cups that evening. And for him, every evening after that seemed to draw earlier and earlier.

Of what they heard from their liege, when drink had loosened his tongue, few of king Famorgh's servitors dared recount. Many of these met with ill ends, as did the king's own brother. Their foreign queen Lunalia proved a puissant sorceress and acted as if she were sovereign over Tasuun, no longer so lush as it had been. Lunalia, with the aid of potions, burned through lovers at a rate oft compared to mad queen Xantlicha. Too soon, their subjects had cause to fear their princess Ulua as well. The besotted king and hex-casting queen denied nothing to their heir, by her fifteenth birthday herself a budding witch, but hale if small on her own two unremarkable feet. And both ladies, the younger at court, the elder reclining or seated in her chambers, were ever attended by the purple-shrouded necromancers from Maat.

The slave marts in Ummaos burgeoned with Tasuunis fleeing the droughts and the witches' tyranny. Here, it was widely related that the queen in Miraab was a cripple. In quieter tones, some men told that those limbs which had borne her from the domes of Ummaos to the royal tower of Miraab were now musty-smelling and dessicated, more like to the flesh of a mummified cadaver than to that of a healthy woman or even of a gangrenous invalid. And they counted only four long toes on each of her tiny rotted feet.

The good Xylacqui women and men in Ummaos' bazaars heard these tales and shuddered. But they took solace in the thought of their own hobbled empress, the former dancer Sidaiva now raising two healthy teen-aged princes who never wanted for dancing-partners.


End file.
